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RUDOLF EUGKEN'S MESSAGE 

TO OUR AGE— AN 
APPRECIATION AND A CRITICISM 



BY 
HENRY C/ SHELDON 

Professor in Boitdn University 




New York: EATON & MAINS 
Cincinnati: JENNINGS & GRAHAM 



^^-^v^^ 



Copyright, 1913, by 
HENKY C. SHELDON 



O)CI,A343380 



PREFACE 

It was with no thought of publica- 
tion that the essay on the teaching of 
Rudolf Eucken was written. Only 
the plea that it would afford useful 
guidance to many who are asking 
what they ought to think of the sys- 
tem of the distinguished philosopher 
has led us to consent to have it placed 
before the public. We trust that the 
reader will notice the relatively large 
space which is given to an apprecia- 
tive exposition, and will not allow the 
criticism which is passed upon some 
phases of Professor Eucken^s theological 
thinking to stand in the way of a high 
valuation of his philosophy proper. 

Boston University^ 
January, 1913. 



I 

Two main endeavors come to very 
emphatic manifestation in the writings 
of Rudolf Eucken^ Professor of Phi- 
losophy in the University of Jena. On 
the one hand, he aims to uncover with 
utmost distinctness the great deficien- 
cies of the age. On the other hand, he 
seeks to direct to the remedy which is 
alone adequate. Whatever may be the 
estimate of his success in his chosen 
task, no one can question the deeply 
earnest and religious spirit in which 
he has taken up and pursued that task. 

Letting the Professor speak as far as 
possible for himself, we will forthwith 
illustrate his view on the characteristic 
deficits of the age by citing a few 
paragraphs from writings recently 
given to the public. In his book on 
The Truth of Religion he writes as 
follows : 

^^We witness with painful clearness 

7 



8 RUDOLF EUCKEN'S 

to-day a strong decline of inward cul- 
ture; ever less does man find definite 
satisfaction in all the bustle of our 
modern mechanism; ever more is the 
inward life lowered in its pitch to 
the commonplace; and ever clearer it 
becomes apparent that all the gain on 
the periphery of life cannot counter- 
balance the loss which occurs at the 
center. In the last resort it is true 
that we live our existence from out 
the center, and, although this fact 
may be forgotten in our relationship 
to the environment, it can never be 
permanently lost. ... It is an age 
afilicted with an immense contradic- 
tion. It is wonderfully great in its 
mastery of and achievements within 
the environing world; but, on the other 
hand, it is deplorably poor and inse- 
cure in regard to the problems of the 
inner life and the inner world.^^^ 

In another volume Professor Eucken 
remarks: 



iPp. 117, 118, 605. 



MESSAGE TO OUR AGE 9 

^The position at the present mo- 
ment conclusively proves that the con- 
tent of man's life is not the easy, 
unsought product of a natural process 
of historical development, for, after all 
the weary work of many thousand 
years, we are to-day in a condition of 
painful uncertainty, a state of hope- 
less fluctuation, not merely with re- 
gard to individual questions, but also 
as to the general purpose and meaning 
of life/^i 

Again he observes: 

^^A paralyzing doubt saps the vi- 
tality of our age. We see a clear proof 
of this in the fact that, with all our 
astounding achievements, we are not 
really happy. There is no pervading 
sense of confidence and security, but 
rather a tendency to emphasize man's 
insignificance, and to think meanly of 
his position in the universe. A closer 
scrutiny reveals the presence of a 



1 The Problem of Human Life as Viewed by the Great Thinkers, 
p. 565. 



10 RUDOLF EUCKEN'S 

genuine endeavor to unify life, but 
even so the processes adopted are so 
widely divergent as to be directly an- 
tagonistic. . . . Over against a lavish 
output of departmental work we have 
to set a woeful incapacity to deal with 
life as a whole, and a growing uncer- 
tainty as to the goal aimed at and the 
nature of the path to be followed/'^ 
^^Sharp contrasts have always been 
found in human experience; and in 
transitional periods in history they 
have been felt with painful acuteness. 
But never did they so extend over the 
whole life and so deeply affect funda- 
mentals; never was there so much un- 
certainty with regard to what should 
be the main direction and endeavor 
and the meaning of all human exist- 
ence and man^s relation, as in the 
present/^^ 

If it is the office of a prophet not to 
utter smooth things, but to lay bare 



I The Meaning and the Value of Life, p. 2. 
> Life's Basis and Life's Ideal, pp. 93, 94. 



MESSAGE TO OUR AGE 11 

the faults of the contemporary genera- 
tion, then Eucken may be regarded as 
fulfilling somewhat of a prophetical vo- 
cation in his unsparing criticism of the 
present age. Over against the self- 
complacency and seK-puffery in which 
the age is so prone to indulge, his 
message on its essential poverty as 
respects the deeper things of life may 
well provoke to serious reflection. 

II 

In reviewing the means for meeting 
the inward destitution or spiritual pov- 
erty of the time, Eucken emphasizes 
the futility of resorting to anything 
not as deep-reaching and fundamental 
as the lack itself. Among all the 
schemes which put forward their 
claims, he rates naturalism, or that 
scheme which construes man as a 
mere piece of nature, as the most un- 
satisfactory. It is without logical 
basis, being contradicted by the fact 
that in cognizing and interpreting na- 



12 RUDOLF EUCKEN'S 

ture man demonstrates that he is 
above its plane. ^^If our intellect 
were no more than naturalism can 
logically make it out to be, it could at 
most refine the animal presentations a 
little; it never could have advanced 
beyond the single presentations to a 
representative conception of the world 
as a whole. Such an advance can be 
achieved only by thought raising it- 
seK above the stream of appearances 
and placing itself over against it; but 
how could a mere bundle of percep- 
tions, to which naturalism reduces the 
intellect, achieve this? Incomparably 
more unity of being and freedom of 
operation are necessary for this 
achievement than such a bundle could 
produce.^^^ ^^Even the most zealous 
champion of nature cannot deny that 
we achieve something distinctive; we 
not only belong to nature, we have 
knowledge of the fact; and this knowl- 
edge is in itself sufficient to show that 

1 Life's Basis and Life's Ideal, p. 30. 



MESSAGE TO OUR AGE 13 

we are more than nature /^^ While 
thus naturalism is superficial and abor- 
tive in point of theory, it is utterly- 
poverty-stricken as respects ability to 
satisfy man^s deeper needs. ^^He who 
thinks things out to their logical issue 
will find that naturalism leads no- 
where: he will find himself driven to 
negation and despair. It is only 
through the intensity of her opposition 
to what she holds to be superstitious 
and illusory that naturalism herself can 
be deceived as to her own emptiness 
and her lack of any spiritually produc- 
tive power. '^^ 

As compared with naturalism, im- 
manent idealism commands a degree of 
tolerance from Professor Eucken. Ac- 
cording to this scheme the thought 
world and the sense world are not 
antithetic, but are related as elements 
or aspects of a single whole. ^They 
are related to one another as reality 



1 Life's Basis and Life's Ideal, p. 114. 

* The Meaning and the Value of Life, p. 32. 



14 RUDOLF EUCKEN'S 

and appearance, as cause and effect, 
as animating and animated nature. 
The divine is not so much a power 
transcending the world as one per- 
meating and living in it; not some- 
thing specific outside of things, but 
their connection in a living unity /^^ 
This type of thought has had wide 
currency in recent times. But in re- 
spect of light and leading for the age 
it is quite decidedly wanting. In pur- 
suance of its premise on an all- 
controlling emphatically immanent 
reason or life-power, it slurs over the 
darker phases in the actual system of 
things, and gravitates into a pan- 
theism destructive of the proper con- 
cept of the divine. Its promise is 
illusory. It furnishes no basis of per- 
manent satisfaction. 

Eucken considers whether culture, or 
advancing civilization, can be expected 
to bring to human life the needful en- 
richment and uplift. His conclusion is 

1 Life's^Basia and Life's Ideal, p. 15. 



MESSAGE TO OUR AGE 15 

adverse. ^The impersonal work of cul- 
ture and civilization/^ he says, ^^threat- 
ens to become mechanical from its very 
center outwards. No growth of inner 
potency corresponds to the increase of 
work, and expansion by far outweighs 
concentration; man becomes more and 
more the slave of his work and a bun- 
dle of isolated accomplishments.^'^ 

The verdict of the Professor on the 
competency of socialistic programs, of 
w^hatever order, to work effectually to- 
ward an ideal stage of man's life is 
equally negative. In his view Social- 
ism is greatly at fault in making the 
economic point of view so perfectly 
controlling, and in overlooking both 
the evil in man — ^which is beyond the 
cure of mere agreeable conditions — and 
the deep needs of his spiritual nature. 
^^Even from the remotest times,'' he 
writes, ^^ there have been theorists who 
expected a complete social regenera- 
tion to ensue from the abolition and 



1 The Truth of^Religion, pp. 58, 59. 



16 RUDOLF EUCKEN'S 

restriction of the divisions between 
classes. More than two thousand 
years ago Aristotle met them with 
the objection that the complication 
goes deeper than they think, that the 
worst crimes are not the result of 
need, but of wantonness and a Agreed 
for more/ and that even though a new 
social regime might remove or remedy 
certain defects, it would be sure to 
introduce or strengthen others/^^ Cul- 
ture of the socialistic type, Eucken 
contends, is too much a matter of the 
surface. ^This culture only throws 
man back unceasingly upon the merely 
human, and unmercifully holds him 
firmly fixed in it. It chains him to his 
own appearance and suppresses all ten- 
dencies toward depth. It knows noth- 
ing of lifers consciousness of itself; it 
knows no inner problems, no definite 
development of the soul; it cannot 
acknowledge a common life of an 



1 The Problem of Human Life as Viewed by the Great Thinkers, 
p. 649. 



MESSAGE TO OUR AGE IT 

inner kind, but must derive all from 
external relations. At the same time 
it excludes all understanding of the 
movement of universal history; for the 
chief content of this movement con- 
stitutes just those problems which 
Socialism regards as foolish delusions. 
To be sure, the striving after an inner 
independence of life has brought much 
error with it, and it may involve 
much that is problematical. But that 
a longing after such independence 
should arise at all and prove itself able 
to call forth so much endeavor suffi- 
ciently demonstrates that man is more 
than a mere being of society, more 
than a member of a social organ- 
ism.^^^ ^Trosperity,^^ it is stated in 
another connection, ^^a life of careless 
enjoyment, cannot possibly suffice to 
make us happy, for while we are slay- 
ing one foe — ^sorrow and need — another, 
perhaps a worse one, is arising — 
namely, blankness and boredom; nor is 

1 Life's Basis and Life's Ideal, p. 58. 



18 RUDOLF EUCKEN'S 

it easy to see how a socialistic pro- 
gram can help us to fight it. In truth, 
all civilization which simply aims at 
fostering and furthering man^s im- 
mediate interests bears the inevitable 
impress of barrenness and desolation/'^ 

In making this adverse comment the 
philosopher does not intend, of course, 
to disparage efforts to ameliorate so- 
cial conditions. His strictures fall only 
upon the assumption that enterprise of 
this sort is able by itself to lift man 
out of his impoverishment into the 
fullness and satisfaction of a normal life. 

In like manner Eucken finds in 
what has been called the ^ ^gospel of 
work'' no proper remedy for the spirit- 
ual poverty so largely characteristic of 
the age. He admits, indeed, that the 
plea for absorbing activity is in the 
right as against a one-sided subjec- 
tivity or withdrawal from the work of 
the modem world,^ but he repudiates 



1 The Meaning and the Value of Life, p. 47. 
a The Truth of Religion, p. 68. 



MESSAGE TO OUR AGE 19 

the notion that mere work can meet 
the demand of the inner life. ^^When 
we take/^ he says, ^^an inside view of 
life we find that a life of mere bustling 
routine preponderates, that men strug- 
gle and boast and strive to outdo one 
another, that unlimited ambition and 
vanity are characteristic of individuals, 
that they are always running to and 
fro and pressing forward, and fever- 
ishly exerting all their powers. But 
throughout it all we come upon noth- 
ing that gives any real value to life, 
and nothing spiritually elevating. 
Hence we do not find any meaning or 
value in life, but in the end a single 
huge show in which culture is reduced 
to a burlesque. Anyone who thinks it 
all over, and reflects upon the differ- 
ence between the enormous labor that 
has been expended and the accom- 
panying gain to the essentials of life, 
must either be driven to complete ne- 
gation and despair, or must seek new 
ways of guaranteeing a value to life 



20 RUDOLF EUCKEN'S 

and liberating man from the sway of 
the pettily human/'^ ^Tor a time we 
can stifle thought in work, but we 
cannot indefinitely work on for work's 
sake only. Voltaire's recipe — to work, 
but to ask no reasons — ^would, if put 
into practice, degrade us to mere 
beasts of burden/'^ 

III 

The above sketches the negative 
side of Professor Eucken's teaching 
relative to the way of meeting the 
pressing demand of the age. When 
we inquire after his positive prescrip- 
tion for fulfilling that demand we find 
that he has formulated one, if not in 
detail, at least in general terms, and 
is prepared to commend it with great 
earnestness of conviction. Stated in 
brief, his prescription is the vital 
recognition of a supreme spiritual life 
(Geistes-Leben), at once above the 

1 The Life of the Spirit, p. 88. 

2 The Meaning and the Value of Life, pp. 22, 23. 



MESSAGE TO OUR AGE 21 

world and in the world, and the se- 
rious, thoroughgoing response of the 
individual to the nature and require- 
ments of that life. 

The ground for affirming the ac- 
tuality of this supreme spiritual life 
consists not so much in formal dem- 
onstration as in the demand for such 
a life to serve as a credible basis for 
a rational system, and to furnish a 
satisfactory explanation of the con- 
tent of human experience. The fol- 
lowing passages will serve to illustrate 
this point of view: 

^^The transformation of all reality 
into a stream of becoming — provided 
we follow it to the bitter end, and do 
not stop arbitrarily in the middle — 
destroys all truth and empties life of 
all its content. Reality itself seems 
nothing more than an ephemeral world 
of shadows. Truth, in any and every 
meaning of the word, is possible only 
in contradistinction to the limitations 
and fluctuations of time. If we have 



22 RUDOLF EUCKEN'S 

nothing that we can oppose to time, 
then man and man^s opinions are the 
sole arbiter of what we are to look 
upon as good and true. There is no 
longer any standard which will afford 
a measure of his capacity and act as a 
check on arbitrary caprice.''^ ^^We 
could not speak at all of truth over 
against mere opinion, or of good over 
against mere utility, unless there is 
some point of departure from the 
limits of mere humanity, and unless 
there is an acknowledgment of 
truth beyond man himself/'^ ^The 
assertion of an independent spiritual 
life, transcendent over all human un- 
dertaking, is a sufficient safeguard 
against a destructive relativism/'^ '^It 
is to be borne in mind that the spiritual 
life in man could never rise against the 
power of nature if it were no more 
than a purely human thing. Nature 
surrounds us a boundless kingdom of 

1 Christianity and the New Idealism, p. 41. 

2 The Truth of Religion, p. 512. 

' Life's Basis and Life's Ideal, p. 224. 



MESSAGE TO OUR AGE 23 

energies and laws; it surrounds us, not 
merely from without, but strikes deep 
into our own soul with thousandfold 
incessant effects. How could the 
spiritual life, which finds itself first in 
our aspiration, in any manner enforce 
its way against all this did we not 
stand upon inward connections, and 
had there not worked in us over 
against that which is given in the sur- 
rounding world the energy of a new 
kind of world?' '^ ^ ^Without the pres- 
ence of the Infinite there would be no 
striving after truth, no energy for the 
good or for love over against egotistic 
utility/'^ In a word, the supreme 
spiritual life is a needed basis of any 
trustworthy system of truth, and it 
evidences itself by results wrought in 
the human spirit. 

In describing the characteristics of 
the supreme spiritual life Professor 
Eucken emphasizes in particular its 



1 The Truth of Religion, pp. 159, 160. 
* Ibid., p. 507. 



24 RUDOLF EUCKEN'S 

independence, its transcendence of 
time limitations, and its immanence 
in the world process and especially in 
the life of humanity. The first of 
these points is very emphatically as- 
serted, as appears in these specimen 
sayings: ^To regard the spiritual Hfe 
as merely man^s work is to destroy it 
at the root. It cannot be understood 
save as a development of the organ- 
ized universe, a development which 
takes place in man, connnunicates it- 
self to man, but is never merely man's 
production.''^ ^^One thing we must, 
above all, bear in mind — that if the 
invisible world is to have the requisite 
stability and breadth, it cannot be the 
mere object of our finite longing or 
any inference laboriously drawn from 
the conditions of our finite experience; 
it must be completely independent, and 
exist in its own right. And this is impos- 
sible unless we are to find in it not the 
mere further development of our given 

1 Christianity and the New Idealism, p. 10. 



MESSAGE TO OUR AGE 25 

powers along certain special lines, but 
the underived totality of life and being/ '^ 
The character of the supreme spirit- 
ual life as timeless, while yet in most 
intimate relations with the time world, 
is thus expressed: ^^ReHgion will de- 
mand in a most decisive manner that 
time with all its change and caprice 
shall not pass judgment on the spirit- 
ual life, but that the latter shall judge 
concerning the valuable and the value- 
less of the things of time/^^ ^^History 
is only valuable as being the medium 
through which the eternal reveals it- 
self, as being that whose whole exist- 
ence is but a struggle for the eternal/ ^^ 
^'History cannot become a struggle for 
the content of the spiritual life unless 
the main standard of life is laid be- 
yond the bare results of the times in 
a timeless order/ ^^ ^The characteris- 
tic mark of the eternal is not a ca- 



1 The Meaning and the Value of Life, p. 75. 

2 The Truth of Religion, pp. 472, 473. 

* Christianity and the New Idealism, p. 47. 
*The Truth of Religion, p. 175. 



26 RUDOLF EUCKEN'S 

pacity to maintain itself consistently 
unchanged amid all the changes of 
time. It iS; rather, the ability to 
enter into the varied life of different 
epochs without losing itself in them, 
to manifest in them all its transcendent 
power, to pursue in them all the same 
end of freeing time from its purely 
temporal character.''^ 

In the passage just cited the aspect 
of immanence is combined with that 
of eternity. Enforcement of the 
former aspect is contained also in 
sentences like these: ^^The divine is to 
us not only a world-transcendent sov- 
ereignty, but also a world-pervading 
power: to honor the former prepon- 
derantly may be the only salvation for 
times and individuals in a state of 
prostration and collapse, but this form 
of life can never be accepted as the 
normal one, and the one alone worth 
striving for/'^ ^'However certain it 



* Christianity and the New Idealism, p. 65. 
2 Life's Basis and Life's Ideal, pp. 281, 282. 



MESSAGE TO OUR AGE 27 

be that the basis of man^s work must 
be laid within a spiritual Over-life, yet 
the precise form which it takes must 
be determined by his own struggle/'^ 
^The freedom and the self-activity of 
man are not a withdrawal of the di- 
vine power and the lessening of divine 
grace, but they are the verification 

of them — the highest verification of 
all/^2 

In Eucken's exposition of the su- 
preme spiritual life it is easy to detect 
a kinship with the trend of the great 
idealistic philosophies. Professor 
Troeltsch has remarked: ^^In Eucken 
we have a combination of Plato, 
Fichte, and Hegel/ ''^ This statement 
we are inclined to regard as pretty 
well grounded. The transcendent in- 
dependent spiritual life postulated by 
Eucken has a distinct kinship with the 
eternal ideas of Plato which serve as 
the rational and formative principle in 

1 The Meaning and the Value of Life, p. 98. 

2 The Truth of Religion, p. 223. 

8 The Harvard Review, October, 1912. 



28 RUDOLF EUCKEN'S 

the world. Fichte^s stress upon the 
moral order as immanent in reality and 
upon the subordination of nature to 
the personal agent has a noticeable, 
if not a complete, counterpart in 
Eucken^s teaching. In HegeFs evolv- 
ing thought as constitutive of the 
universe there is somewhat of a paral- 
lel to the supreme spiritual life which 
Eucken represents as leading on the 
development of the world. It should 
not be overlooked, however, that in 
stressing the transcendence as well as 
the immanence of the fundamental life 
principle the later philosopher stands 
in contrast with the great idealist of 
the preceding century. 

In choosing ^'life" rather than ^'idea^' 
or ^ ^thought'' to give expression to the 
basal reality, the present-day philos- 
opher was doubtless moved by the 
breadth of significance belonging to 
the first of these terms, as covering 
more than the purely intellectual, and 
as carrying suggestions of dynamic 



MESSAGE TO OUR AGE 29 

efficiency. Translated into the cus- 
tomary language of religion, the su- 
preme spiritual life would appear to 
be none other than God. Indeed, 
Eucken says of the latter term: ^Tt 
signifies nothing other than absolute 
spiritual life in its grandeur above all 
the limitations of man and the world 
of experience — a spiritual life that has 
attained to a complete subsistence in 
itself, and, at the same time, to an 
encompassing of all reality/^^ 

In this statement there is a sugges- 
tion of that double aspect of tran- 
scendence and immanence which has 
been asserted to be characteristic of 
the supreme spiritual life. The same 
aspect is brought out very cogently in 
the following sentence: ^The Godhead 
appears, on the one side, at an infinite 
height and distance above man, so 
that man discovers his pettiness with 
great bitterness; and, on the other 
side, the divine appears as most inti- 

1 The Truth of Religion, pp. 208, 209. 



30 RUDOLF EUCKEN'S 

mate and as the dearest possession, 
so that man is raised through this to 
immeasurable greatness/'^ Thus the 
independent yet immanent life is identi- 
fied with the God who is at once 
transcendent and immanent. 

That Eucken uses the impersonal 
term prevailingly does not import, we 
judge, that he was ill-affected toward 
the conception of the divine person- 
ality. He asserts, in fact, that this 
conception within the life-process of 
religion is indispensable;^ and it is 
natural to suppose that he rates a 
demand which is evolved in that pro- 
cess as correspondent to essential truth. 
It is to be noticed also that in his 
apparently commendatory reference to 
Professor Bowne^s emphasis on the 
personal nature of the unifying prin- 
ciple which is back of the world con- 
stituents, he leaves it to be inferred 
that he postulates divine personality.^ 



1 The Truth of Religion, p. 431. 

2 Ibid., p. 430. 

» Zion'a Herald, December 18, 1912. 



MESSAGE TO OUR AGE 31 

Doubtless it is true that he gives 
evidence of a rather lively apprehen- 
sion that the personality of God may 
be construed in a too anthropomorphic 
fashion. Equally it is not to be de- 
nied that one will fail to find in his 
books such a measure of explicit em- 
phasis on the personality of God as 
is contained in the writings of Pro- 
fessor Bowne. Nevertheless, we infer 
that his conviction respecting the fact 
of divine personality was in line with 
that advocated by our own meta- 
physician, 

IV 

From the nature and function as- 
cribed to the supreme spiritual life 
the office of religion is readily inferred. 
It serves as a practical means of 
connection with this transcendent real- 
ity, in union with which man is lifted 
out of all unworthy subjection to the 
time and sense world. To use the 
language of our philosopher: ^^Religion 



S2 RUDOLF EUCKEN'S 

has opened out an intimate relation- 
ship with an infinite and absolute life, 
and has given our life an originality 
over against all attempts to classify it 
with the causal nexus. As religion 
thus places man between the two 
worlds, it calls him to a self-decision 
and makes freedom for the first time 
possible, for freedom remains an empty 
delusion as long as we are only pieces 
of a merely ^given^ world. And for 
the first time religion furnishes the 
possibility of an inner renewal and of 
a new beginning through a contact 
with an inexhaustible depth/ '^ 

As respects the historical rehgions, 
Professor Eucken refuses to identify 
any one of them, in its actual form, 
with the absolute religion. The most 
that he concedes to Christianity is 
that it comes nearer to being an em- 
bodiment of the absolute religion than 
any other system of religious faith 
and practice. His words are: ^'As 

1 The Truth of Religion, p. 509. 



MESSAGE TO OUR AGE 33 

certainly as there is only one sole 
truth, there can be only one absolute 
religion, and this religion coincides en- 
tirely in no way with any one of the 
historical religions. For they all con- 
ceive the divine under the conditions 
of the human situation; originating and 
growing in particular epochs, they have 
all to pay tribute to the character- 
istics and culture of such epochs. . . . 
The whole of our investigation leaves 
no doubt as to our position in re- 
gard to Christianity. A double aspect 
has already been fully noticed. On 
the one hand, Christianity in the 
nature of its substance appears as 
the highest embodiment of the ab- 
solute religion; and, on the other hand, 
a fundamental revision of its tra- 
ditional existential form has become 
absolutely necessary.^^^ 

The relative superiority of Christian- 
ity is asserted by Eucken with un- 
hesitating conviction. He notices, in 

1 The Truth of Religion, pp. 535, 539. 



Si RUDOLF EUCKEN'S 

the first place, that it has a great 
advantage in the character of its per- 
sonal center— ^a factor which is of 
great significance to any historical 
system. No unbiased mind, he main- 
tains, can fail to acknowledge the 
unique preeminence of Jesus Christ. 
^ ^Religion has here transformed itself 
into a human purity with wonderful 
energy and inwardness; an overtower- 
ing height has joined itself with a 
simple innocence; manly energy of 
action has united with gentle feelings, 
and a youthful joy of disposition with 
a deep discovery of suffering. . . . The 
personality of the Founder has thus 
become incomparably more to Chris- 
tianity than the founders of all the 
other religions have become to their 
adherents.^^^ ^That life of Jesus exer- 
cises ever more a tribunal over the 
world; and the majesty of such 
an effective bar of judgment super- 
sedes all the developments of external 

i The Truth of Religion, pp. 16, 17. 



MESSAGE TO OUR AGE 35 

power/^^ Other tributes equally appre- 
ciative might be cited.^ It is worthy 
of notice also that the philosopher 
holds that historical criticism can never 
dim the image of Jesus which shines 
forth from the Gospels. It approves 
itseK irresistibly as a copy of reality. 
'^In the innermost traits of his being 
Jesus is more transparent and familiar 
to us than any hero of the world's 
history/'^ 

Other points in the preeminence of 
Christianity are represented as corre- 
sponding in no small degree to the 
superlative worth of the Founder. For 
instance, Christianity, as no other re- 
hgion, places love at the center, and 
exalts it as the controlling world- 
renewing power."* It begets a warm 
interest in all humanity, a longing 
to redeem every individual.^ Again, 

1 The Truth of Religion, p. 361. 

2 See in particular The Problem of Human Life as Viewed by 
the Great Thinkers, pp. 169, 170. 

3 The Problem of Human Life as Viewed by the Great Thinkers, 
p. 151. 

4 Christianity and the New Idealism, pp. 136, 137. 
6 The Truth of Religion, p. 543. 



36 RUDOLF EUCKEN^S 

Christianity by the power inherent 
in itself works for the transformation 
of the whole man.^ Avoiding all 
shallow optimism, frankly recognizing 
man^s deep estrangement from the 
right, it summons to a fundamental 
regeneration.^ Once more Christianity 
makes close connection with an in- 
visible world. And it does this with- 
out running into an ascetic disparage- 
ment of the present world. 'Tor 
the fundamentally ethical character 
of Christianity causes its spiritual 
superiority to the world to become 
at the same time constructive of a 
higher world. ''^ 

V 
As was brought out in one of the 
cited passages, Eucken is disposed to 

1 The Truth of Religion, pp. 495, 496. 

2 Christianity and the New Idealism, pp. 137-141. These pages 
may intimate that Eucken is not tied to a technical theory of 
original sin; but they certainly make plain, as also do statements 
in other connections, that he takes no rose-colored view of the 
actual morEtl tendencies and condition of men. 

« The Problem of Hiunan Life as Viewed by the Great Thinkers* 
p. 134. . ^ ^ 



MESSAGE TO OUR AGE 37 

unite with a profound appreciation of 
the lofty traits of Christianity an im- 
perative demand for the reconstruction 
of its existential form. That in put- 
ting forward this demand he does not 
run into sheer arbitrariness will hardly 
be questioned by one who makes an 
unbiased study of the forms which 
Christianity has taken on in the course 
of the historical evolution. But to 
say this much is far from granting 
that Eucken himself has furnished, 
even in outline, a satisfactory doc- 
trinal structure. Indeed, it is our 
conviction that, while a great part 
of his thought respecting the ideal 
Christian system is true and normal, 
he comes short on the person and 
work of Christ. So far as we have 
been able to discover, he does not 
accept even the essential feature of 
the catholic Christology. He greatly 
emphasizes, it is true, the union of 
the human and the divine as a most 
potent and salutary feature in Chris- 



38 RUDOLF EUCKEN'S 

tian teaching. He criticizes, further- 
more, a rationalistic paring down of 
the significance of Christ. But, after 
all, the plain import of his brief 
references to the subject of Christology 
is that he recognizes no transcendent 
sonship in Christ, and accords to him 
divinity only in the sense in which 
the exceptional man has divinity.^ If 
he had more divinity than others, 
it was only because he more truly 
represented the human ideal than 
others. 

A rejection of the proper divinity 
of Christ involves logically a like 
treatment of the doctrine of the Trinity. 
Eucken says but little on this theme, 
yet enough to indicate his negative 
attitude. 

A very obvious comment on the 
Professor's revised Christology is, that 
it brings us face to face with a great 

1 The Truth of Religion, pp. 20, 206, 584, 585; The Problem of 
Life as Viewed by the Great Thinkers, pp. 151, 152; Christianity 
and the New Idealism, pp. 64, 80, 87, 120, 121; Life's Basis and 
Life's Ideal, p. 332. 



MESSAGE TO OUR AGE S9 

practical difficulty. It collides with 
the New Testament — not merely with 
isolated passages in the New Testa- 
ment, but with the trend of the New 
Testament as a whole. All the Gos- 
pels and nearly all of the Epistles 
make Christ distinctly more than a 
purely human ideal. To deny then 
his transcendent sonship goes so far 
in contradicting the primitive oracles 
of Christianity as seriously to assail 
its historical foundations. And thus 
to retrench historical foundations is 
not of slight consequence. Just in 
proportion as that is done the effec- 
tive practical basis of Christianity is 
cut away, and it is left to swing in 
the mid-air of theoretical conceptions. 
Theoretical ideals may be well shaped 
and measurably edifying, but they are 
no substitute for a firm historical 
basis. As Eucken himself has said: 
^To construct a religion out of con- 
cepts cunningly strung together, what 
is it but to attempt to make a real 



40 RUDOLF EUCKEN'S 

material body out of phantoms?'^^ We 
distrust, accordingly, the religious out- 
come of any scheme which would dis- 
lodge the element of the transcendent 
sonship of Christ from the New Testa- 
ment. That element is too closely 
interwoven with the fiber of the New 
Testament teaching to be taken out 
without injury to faith in the his- 
torical basis of Christianity. 

Professor Eucken would doubtless 
contend, as indeed he has done, that 
the pure human ideal of Christ is 
self-attesting. But where is the war- 
rant for asserting that the divine- 
human ideal as reflected in the New 
Testament is not self -attesting? Many 
close students have been profoundly 
convinced that it is of that nature. 
As one of them remarks in substance: 
^The harmony of the character of 
Christ as dehneated in the Gospels, 
the intermingling of the divine and 
the human in such a way that the 

1 Christianity and the New Idealism, pp. 14G, 147. 



MESSAGE TO OUR AGE 41 

lowly and human never degrade him 
in our eyes, nor his power and great- 
ness remove him out of our sym- 
pathies and understanding, is incon- 
sistent with the supposition that the 
record as a source of historic truth 
has been impaired by theological bias. 
That such a picture was or could 
have been the growth of unconscious 
theologizing is far more incredible than 
that it is what it professes to be, the 
record of a subUme reality /^^ All 
through the Christian ages a very 
large proportion of those who have 
partaken most deeply of the life and 
power of Christianity have gained the 
same impression of the delineation of 
the divine-human Christ in the New 
Testament. If this ideal is to be 
vanquished by any doctrinaire con- 
struction, what is to guarantee that 
a like order of construction may not 
insist on paring down the purely hu- 



1 Somerville, Saint Paul's Conception of Christianity, pp. 225, 
226. 



42 RUDOLF EUCKEN'S 

man ideal? No, it is a serious matter 
to revise the New Testament Christ- 
ology to the extent proposed. A crit- 
ical surgery skillful enough to cut out 
the higher view of Christ without 
impairing the ground of confidence in 
the historic basis of Christianity is in 
no way likely to appear. 

Furthermore, it is legitimate to con- 
tend that there is a loss of majesty 
and authority in making the incarna- 
tion, in relation to Christ, nothing 
more than a superior specimen of that 
union between the human and the 
divine which occurs in mankind gen- 
erally. On the catholic theory of 
the incarnation of the eternal Son of 
God, Christianity at once takes rank 
as being in essential character the 
absolute religion. On the humanitarian 
theory of Eucken its right to such 
rank is open to question, and the 
inevitable tendency will be for it to 
recede from the masterful and com- 
manding position which accrues to it 



MESSAGE TO OUR AGE 43 

in catholic teaching. Had the crit- 
icism of our philosopher been aimed 
against the artificial and overwrought 
Christological construction which has 
sometimes been obtruded on the faith 
of Christians, it would not be sub- 
ject to challenge. But as being di- 
rected against any and every form 
of the catholic doctrine of the in- 
carnation, we can but regard it as mis- 
taken. 

The like remark applies to Eucken's 
radical disparagement of the catholic 
conception of Christ's mediation. Not 
a little of the doctrinal construction 
on this theme, it may be admitted, 
has been one-sided and might very 
well be set aside. But that does not 
justify the summary exclusion of the 
idea of mediation, or the limitation 
of it simply to such manifestation of 
divine truth as may be furnished 
through a pure human subject. To 
reduce Christ's mediation to this meas- 
ure, as Eucken evidently is minded 



44 RUDOLF EUCKEN'S 

to do/ is in emphatic contrast with 
the New Testament content and with 
the general trend of Christian thought 
and feeling through the centuries. The 
consistent carrying out of such a point 
of view would strip the hymn books 
of all the great historic communions 
of nearly half their contents. And 
what would be gained? An increased 
sense of the nearness of God? a more 
vivid realization of immediate relation 
with him? Rather, we believe, the 
opposite result would be likely to fol- 
low. Mediation, it is true, may be 
construed in a deistic sense, and so 
be accessory to placing God afar off, 
but there is no necessity of constru- 
ing it in that sense. God is not afar 
off from the little child because in so 
large a degree he mediates his benev- 
olence through the mother's smile, 
the mother's soothing touch, and all 
the watchcare of the mother in ward- 



» The Truth of Religion, pp. 587, 589; Christianity and the New 
Idealism, pp. 120, 121. , 



MESSAGE TO OUR AGE 45 

ing off dangers and providing suitable 
means of nurture. The divine near- 
ness is simply made concrete and 
effectual by the maternal ministry. 
And so throughout the whole minis- 
try of man to man in any discretely 
ordered scheme. God is rather brought 
near to the apprehension of men, 
through the friendly service rendered 
to them by their fellows, than placed 
afar off. 

Now the same God who employs 
the ministries of ordinary men to give 
ordinary expression to his good will 
may make use of the extraordinary 
ministry of a transcendent personality 
to give extraordinary expression to 
that good will. And if he should 
do so, he would in no wise sacrifice 
nearness or immediacy to mediation. 
He would simply give the most effec- 
tive expression to his nearness. The 
well-beloved Son, the Christ, is me- 
diator not as being set over against 
an absent God, but as giving ideal 



46 RUDOLF EUCKEN^S 

expression to a present God. He is 
perfectly qualified to be the mediator 
just because the perfect fullness of 
the Father dwells in him. Partaking 
without stint of the Father^s will, pur- 
pose, life, he is able to reflect the 
perfect image of his love and right- 
eousness. Perfect nearness and full- 
ness of presence become the spring of 
perfect mediation. This is distinctly 
the New Testament view. The exalted 
sense of mediatorship or Saviourhood 
in the incarnate Son was always joined 
with an exalted sense of union with 
the Father. It was precisely because 
he was able to say, ^The Father is 
in me and I am in the Father,^' that 
he could also claim with full confidence 
to be in an extraordinary sense a 
medium of blessing to men. His 
presence among men and his work 
for men emphasize the presence of 
the Father, insomuch that he is qual- 
ified to say, ^^He that hath seen me 
hath seen the Father.^' To the phi- 



MESSAGE TO OUR AGE 47 

losopher possibly his philosophic con- 
ception of the Divine may suffice, 
but to the common heart of humanity 
it is no substitute for the manifesta- 
tion of God in Christ. 

VI 

A SUBORDINATE occasion for ques- 
tioning the teaching of our philosopher 
is found in his treatment of the usual 
arguments for the divine existence — 
the cosmological, the teleological, and 
that from human nature taken as a 
basis of scientific induction. He rates 
them as incompetent to fulfill their 
purpose, and the ground of so rating 
them he expresses in these terms: ^^We 
must not forget that no province can 
prove anything outside its own reach, 
and that an attempt to do this leads 
into anthropomorphism.^^^ 

In so far as this proposition is 
meant to emphasize the truth that 
religion has evidences of pecuHar efii- 

1 The Truth of Religion, pp. 513, 514. 



48 RUDOLF EUCKEN'S 

cacy in its own worthful content, and 
is not in any complete sense dependent 
upon the data of scientific study, it 
is to be cordially approved. But it 
is possible to make too emphatic an 
antithesis between the scientific and 
the religious, an antithesis working to 
the disadvantage of religion itself. In- 
deed, we do not see how the assump- 
tion of such disparate spheres between 
the two as is contained in the cited 
proposition and in its application in 
the context can be maintained with- 
out prejudicial results. The universe 
certainly is not made up of water- 
tight compartments. Eucken would 
not so claim. The supposition of the 
rationality of the world system — a 
supposition absolutely necessary to any 
security in intellectual procedure — im- 
plies a degree of correspondence be- 
tween part and part. From any 
different point of view we are left 
inclosed by the limitations of the 
human province; and nothing can help 



MESSAGE TO OUR AGE 49 

us out. Not even the function of a 
supreme spiritual life can afford us 
an outlet, for we have no immediate 
knowledge of this transcendent reality. 
What we know immediately is certain 
effects in us which serve as a ground 
of rational inference — an inference none 
the less actual because possibly very 
swift and confident. These effects or 
experiences are data in a human prov- 
ince, and consequently, cannot give 
valid suggestions as to what is to be 
found in a higher province, if evidence 
cannot lead out of one province into 
another. 

On this premise we seem to be 
consigned to the agnosticism which bars 
out all inquiry as to what is above 
and beyond. But agnosticism of this 
sort is discredited as being in the long 
run an impracticable and an intoler- 
able alternative. Casting aside this 
alternative, we take the sane and 
warrantable course in appealing to the 
rationality of the universe as involving 



50 RUDOLF EUCKEN'S 

a degree of correspondence between 
part and part, and so providing that 
data in one department may have more 
or less significance for another province. 

We conclude, then, that Eucken^s 
proposition does not afford a well- 
grounded basis for his negative attitude 
toward the historic arguments for the 
divine existence. We are aware that 
the Professor is not without company 
in the position which he takes, and we 
appreciate his motive, namely, the wish 
to give due credit to the deliverances 
of the religious consciousness. We 
think, however, that he underrates the 
theistic proof which is afforded by a 
well-conducted attempt rationally to 
construe the world and man. As be- 
tween Eucken and Bowne on the point 
in question, it strikes us that the latter 
is distinctly to be preferred. 

In referring to one other point in 
Professor Eucken's thinking we are in- 
fluenced less by an unequivocal occa- 
sion for criticism than by a desire to 



MESSAGE TO OUR AGE 51 

clarify, in some degree, the bearings 
or apologetic connections of a subject 
which is frequently brought to view in 
our time. The point concerns the 
estimate of miracles, and especially of 
the resurrection of Jesus. Now, we 
have not discovered that the Professor 
has any special ambition to launch 
out into a negative dogmatism on this 
theme. He stands, in fact, in con- 
trast with some of our contemporaries, 
with their flippant ukase against mira- 
cles of all sorts. ^^With good reason,^' 
he says, ^^did our greatest poet call 
miracle the dearest child of faith. 
A rehgion entirely void of it is a self- 
contradiction. '^^ He speaks, moreover, 
of the ^ ^miraculous transforming char- 
acter of the entry of the divine into 
the human. ^'^ Miracle, then, he recog- 
nizes. The only question is as to 
the sphere in which he supposes it 
to be operative. Evidently, the sphere 



1 Christianity and the New Idealism, pp. 35, 36. 
» Ibid., p. 80. 



52 RUDOLF EUCKEN'S 

in which he prefers to find it is that 
of the working of a superhuman and 
supernatural fife for the inner trans- 
formation of men. If he does not 
challenge outright the physical miracle, 
he rates it as no essential in the 
Christian religion. This is manifest 
from the tone of his comment on the 
miracle most distinctly emphasized in 
the New Testament, the resurrection 
of Jesus. Faith in the bodily resurrec- 
tion he declares is no necessity for 
religion. ^Taith has as its object 
what is of a timeless nature — ^what is 
able to be immediately present to each 
individual and able to manifest its 
own elevating energy. '^^ In weighing 
this declaration the pertinent considera- 
tion, it seems to us, lies in a discrim- 
ination between what is strictly nec- 
essary for the individual and what 
is necessary for the eflScient fulfillment 
of a distinct historical vocation in a 
given world by a religion. An indi- 

» The Truth of ReHgion, pp. 552, 553. 



MESSAGE TO OUR AGE 53 

vidual may undoubtedly enter into the 
reality of the spiritual life without 
having embraced the bodily resurrec- 
tion of Jesus as an object of faith. 
But does that prove that the historic 
truth of the resurrection is a matter 
of indifference to religion? Far from 
it. Fervent faith in the resurrection 
of the Crucified One was like a vital 
breath from heaven to incipient Chris- 
tianity. Nor has it been of slight 
efficacy in later times. It has served 
as a great factor in giving to the 
Christian religion tangibility, reality, 
and power to grip the souls of men. 

In general, a religion armed with 
victorious power needs to incorporate 
truth and set it forth in apprehensible 
form. It must be on good terms with 
the concrete. It must furnish intel- 
ligible tokens that God has actually 
wrought something in behaK of men 
and in demonstration of his interest. 
In proportion as religion leaves truth 
in an abstract range it is curtailed 



54 RUDOLF EUCKEN'S 

in the power of effective appeal. An 
abstract religion, as was intimated in 
a previous connection, is simply dis- 
qualified for world conquest in any 
large sense. In this view it becomes 
no light matter to cut out the resurrec- 
tion and the other miracles associated 
with Jesus. They are congenially re- 
lated to his exceptional person and 
office. They enter as a congruous 
factor into a great New Testament 
complex. To tear them out of that 
complex must have a serious bearing 
Upon the historic basis of Christianity. 
It makes a longer step than some in 
our day imagine toward reducing Chris- 
tianity to the weakened and impover- 
ished condition of an abstract religion, 
a group of conceptions without certi- 
fied historical setting or guaranteed 
basis in objective reality. 

VII 

Professor Eucken, in our view, is 
performing a substantial service to this 



MESSAGE TO OUR AGE 55 

generation in emphasizing the truth 
that religion is indispensable to depth 
and fullness of life and to permanent 
satisfaction in life. He also earns 
grateful appreciation by his inculca- 
tion of the truth that religion in its 
proper character lives in a vital recog- 
nition of and participation in a tran- 
scendent life, the unchanging source 
and standard of all goodness and 
truth. We only regret that in dealing 
with historical Christianity he should 
have thought it necessary to exscind 
certain cardinal points of view which 
are deeply imbedded in New Testament 
teaching, and which cannot be cut 
away without detriment at once to 
the historical basis of Christianity and 
to the completeness of its content. 



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